Kindle Fire pre-orders are burning down the house

It was only a matter of time before Amazon realized the true untapped potential of a handheld reading device that could go beyond what its original Kindle could provide users. Not that I think Amazon was ever really going to just sit there and be happy with a device that only provided content to be viewed entirely in black and white.
If the screenshot leak over at blog Cult of Android is to be believed then it would appear that Amazon's Kindle Fire will be the fastest selling tablet device in the world. Currently Kindle Fire is racking up pre order sales of 50,000 units a day. In the first five days since its announcement over 250,000 tablets  have been pre ordered with the potential to have 2.5 Million pre orders for the device before it goes on sale on November 15th.

Compare that to the Nook colour which took about two months to sell 1 million units and its clear to see that Nook has a major fight for survival on its hands.
Good news all round for writers and e-book authors because it provides choice, they can either release content in traditional novel text based format or further explore the possibilities of projects with coloured image based content as well such as photo books, essays and illustrative works.
The digital e-reader market is expanding faster than the content is providing even more good news for authors, as each day goes by authors only have to appeal to a smaller percentage of the e-reader population.
What will be interesting to see is how long Kindles current monochrome version continues to sell, will Kindle Fire actually start to kill off traditional Kindle sales far quicker than anticipated or will the price difference mean that it clearly divides the market between those who just want an e-reader for books and those who want to embrace video entertainment?

As for Nook its difficult to say what happens now, too many tech companies have jumped on the tablet bandwagon only to fail miserably because they were not prepared for the market place, in most cases competitors to the iPad have released hardware but never factored into the business plan that the content wasn't there to support it. HP's TouchPad being a perfect example, with no 3G support, lack of content, no support for storage cards and high retail costs it wasn't going to scratch let alone dent what Apple was offering. Apple thrives because the content is there to drive hardware sales. Nook on the other hand needs to evaluate what it's offering its customers that Kindle Fire doesn't, it may need to re-position itself on price or functionality but at what expense to its place within the market is difficult to ascertain.

In the US, Amazon has about three quarters of the e-book market so its audience is already established and at $199 it provides a good halfway point to the iPad 2 which retails in the region of $470. Admittedly with nowhere near the same functionality as the i-Pad the Kindle Fire is still an impressive bit of kit.